Chris Crucial: Can Donald Trump break the most sacred rule in politics?

PLUS: Dean drops out!

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1. Trump and the politics of addition: The most basic rule for a candidate trying to win a general election — at any level — is that you need to engage in the politics of addition, not subtraction.

What this means is simple: Once you become your party’s nominee, the goal has to be to grow your coalition as broadly as possible. While in a primary you are fighting for the votes of people who agree with you on most issues, the general election is all about convincing people who only agree with you some of the time to cast a vote for you.

Makes sense, right? Right!

I was thinking about the politics of addition this morning as I read about how Donald Trump and Joe Biden reacted to the news that Nikki Haley was dropping her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination.

Here’s what Biden said (in part):

“It takes a lot of courage to run for President — that’s especially true in today’s Republican Party, where so few dare to speak the truth about Donald Trump. Nikki Haley was willing to speak the truth about Trump: about the chaos that always follows him, about his inability to see right from wrong, about his cowering before Vladimir Putin…Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign.”

Which makes sense! Whether Haley voters agree with Biden on most things (or anything!), the president is making clear that he wants their support. Politics of addition!

Now, here’s how Trump handled Haley’s announcement:

Uh, so, this is NOT the politics of addition. (Or grace!) Rather than welcome people who voted for Haley into his camp, Trump is actively pushing them away — insisting that only Democrats voted for Haley and funded her campaign.

Which is provably false. While Haley never rivaled Trump’s numbers among Republican voters, she won somewhere between 10 and 30% of that bloc in most of the states where she went head-to-head with the former president on the ballot.

Again, that’s not enough to be the GOP nominee (as I documented here). But, like, it’s also not nothing! Trump needs those Republican voters to be for him if he wants to win.

Except that he seems to disagree. Because this is not the first time Trump has rejected the politics of addition in recent weeks. In late January, Trump posted this on his Truth Social site:

“Barred”!!! Like, what?

Donald Trump has broken a whole lot of rules about how you run for president — and how you govern once you get there. Given his rhetoric, it appears as though he wants to prove the politics of addition wrong this time around. Bold strategy, Cotton.

2. Dean drops out: Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips ended his quixotic campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination Wednesday, throwing his support behind President Joe Biden.

“I ran for President in 2024 to resist Donald Trump again — because Americans were demanding an alternative, and democracy demands options,” Phillips wrote in a post on Twitter X. “But it is clear that alternative is not me. And it is clear that Joe Biden is OUR candidate and OUR opportunity to demonstrate what type of country America is and intends to be.”

Don’t make too much of this move. Phillips, a gelato magnate (yes, really!), never gained any traction in his generationally-based pitch against Biden. Even when he was an active candidate, he was routinely losing to “uncommitted” and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson, who dropped out of the race before recently re-entering it.

He had no constituency — and hence no real bloc of voters that will shift to Biden. At the same time, Phillips’ departure removes the last hurdle (albeit a small one) to the incumbent’s path to the nomination.

The lingering question when it comes to Phillips is, well, why did he do it? After all, there was never any wavering from the Democratic establishment on Biden. Despite the president’s advanced age, the party has made clear he was their guy from the very start of this process.

My answer? A combination of attention-seeking and boredom. Phillips, who came to Congress in 2019, clearly had zero interest in climbing the leadership ladder. And, I think, he believed (and believes) in his heart of hearts that nominating the aged Biden is a massive risk for his party to take. (He’s right!)

Add those factors to Phillips’ considerable personal wealthy and, whammo, you have a presidential candidate. Look: If Phillips’ goal was simply to get more people in the country to know who he is, mission accomplished!

3. Enter Scott?: Remember when I told you last week that I thought a more Trump-aligned Senator would enter the race for Senate GOP leader?

This, from Tallahassee Democrat (it’s a newspaper!) is, um, enlightening on that front:

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott is “seriously considering” running again for the Senate GOP leader post in November after Mitch McConnell steps down, and he went to Mar-a-Lago on Monday evening to talk about it with former President Donald Trump….

… “I talked to him about the fact that I might run for leader, and if I did that, we would have the opportunity together to change the direction of this country for the better,” Scott said.

Ahem.

Scott has been one of Trump’s most loyal allies — and even ran against Mitch McConnell for the top job (at Trump’s behest) in late 2022. Scott lost that race convincingly — 37 votes to 10.

If he does run, Scott would be the 3rd person in the race — joining more establishment figure John Thune of South Dakota and John Cornyn of Texas.

And, even with Trump’s endorsement — which he would presumably get — Scott would start the race as an underdog. Thune, at the moment, is considered the frontrunner.

But, there’s no question that the two Johns are feeling the pressure to conform to the Trump base. Thune, for example, on Wednesday endorsed Trump favorite Kari Lake’s bid for the Arizona Senate. Axios described the move as “a reversal from Thune's long-term criticism of the MAGA movement.”

Correct. And my guess is there’s plenty more ring-kissing where that came from.

NOTABLE QUOTABLE

“Why don’t you go talk about Jewish space lasers and really, why don’t you fuck off? How about that?” — Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to a reporter who asked why she embraced so many conspiracy theories. (For more on Jewish space lasers, read this.)

ONE GOOD CHART

Pew asked people what issue they most want the president and members of Congress to prioritize this year. And, yes, it’s (still) the economy, stupid.

SONG OF THE DAY

During the pandemic, I got really into ambient music. It just fit my mood at the time. One of the artists I discovered during that period was Nils Frahm, a German composer. Frahm is out with his first new music in three years — an album called “Day.” Here’s a favorite song of mine from the new album; it’s called “Butter Notes.”